A photo shows an aerial drone display in Mexico City depicting a skull wearing a sombrero as part of celebrations for Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead.
This didn’t happen. There’s no other evidence the event took place. The drone display is almost certainly a digital effect. The city in the photo isn’t Mexico City either—it was taken near Mount Fuji, Japan.
A Facebook post suggests a group of aerial drones were lit-up and flown over Mexico City to resemble a skull wearing a sombrero for the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead, which takes place on 2 November.
The post includes an image of what appears to be a huge aerial display of the skull over a city and large mountain range. However, it’s not real.
The image has been online since at least October 2020 and is almost certainly a digital or photo editing effect. While it’s possible to create aerial art displays using drones (such as those seen at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics) there appears to be no news coverage or other photos of this display that might confirm whether it happened.
The background of the display isn’t of Mexico City either or anywhere else in the Americas; it was actually taken more than 7,000 miles away at Mount Fuji, Japan. An article by American fact checkers Snopes states the original photo was taken in 2014 from the nearby Amariyama mountain range, while others have suggested the original picture dates back to at least 2012. Whether they are the same photos, there are plenty of similar images which confirm the photo in the Facebook post is of Mount Fuji.
Based on the position of the mountain and information from other photographs it appears that the city in the foreground is Kofu, the capital of the Yamanashi Prefecture (a regional area that is part of one of nine larger regions that make up Japan).
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because there’s no other evidence the event took place. It appears to be a digital effect applied to a photo of Mount Fuji, not Mexico City.
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